There have been proposed several techniques of interpreting the intention of an input entered through a touch panel or touch pen and supporting the input.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-161427 has proposed a technique of correcting an input deviation from an input target region on a touch panel by converting input point coordinates on the basis of the past input history and the amount of deviation from the target region.
In addition, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-146705 has proposed a technique of preferentially selecting one of a plurality of buttons (target regions) pressed on a touch panel which is higher in the degree of importance or larger in the contact area of the finger pressed.
However, no schemes based on conventional techniques can develop highly flexible applications which can interpret the intention of a user's indication with a confidence score more naturally by describing interpretation rules for the intentions of user's indications as a grammar even if target regions as indication targets overlap or the target region intended by the user slightly deviates from the indicated position.
Under such circumstances, the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-161427 can correct an input deviation with respect to a target region. According to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-146705, when a plurality of target regions are selected, the region intended by the user can be determined by using the degrees of importance of the target regions or the contact areas of the finger at the time of input operation.
According to these references, however, interpretation rules for the intentions of user's indications cannot be described as a grammar, and hence the intentions of user's indications cannot be interpreted with confidence scores.